Pseudonymous Bosch Books in Order

Pseudonymous Bosch is the pen name of Raphael Simon, a California writer who turned a love of secrets, jokes, and reader mischief into a shelf of middle-grade mysteries. He grew up in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, one of two sons raised by two writers. There was no television in the house, and he says he did not learn to read until he was seven.

Once reading clicked, he made up for lost time. Simon read nearly a book a day for years, finding in books both an escape from childhood anxiety and a way to understand himself as a closeted young person.

Stories gave him room to breathe.

He studied at Yale, where he came out during his first year, then earned a master's degree in comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine. At Irvine, he decided he would rather write stories than only study them. Before becoming a children's author, he worked on screenplays for film, television, and video games. He was also a staff writer on Nickelodeon's Rocket Power, an extreme-sports cartoon written by someone who freely admits he is not sporty.

Simon also wrote articles and taught. His teaching has included creative writing, composition, and a class on queer mysteries. Those jobs fit the books that came later, which are packed with clues, interruptions, odd details, and narrators who seem determined to argue with their own readers.

The pseudonym began with a fourth grader named May.

As an elementary-school writing partner, Simon was required to stay anonymous while sending May installments of a story through the mail. That story became The Name of This Book Is Secret, published in 2007. The name Pseudonymous Bosch was both a very literal joke and a nod to the strange paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. The book introduced Cass and Max-Ernest, two eleven-year-olds pulled into a mystery involving a vanished magician, strange scents, and a dangerous secret.

That beginning grew into the five-book Secret Series. Readers tend to come for the puzzles and escalating mysteries, then stay for Cass's stubborn bravery, Max-Ernest's anxious overthinking, and the narrator's constant warnings not to continue. The follow-ups, including If You're Reading This, It's Too Late, This Book Is Not Good for You, and You Have To Stop This, build a world of secret societies, chocolate, magic, and villains with very bad plans.

Simon later returned to that world with the Bad Books, beginning with Bad Magic, about Clay and the unsettling mysteries of Earth Ranch. For younger readers, he created The Unbelievable Oliver and the Four Jokers, a chapter-book mystery about an eight-year-old magician with stage fright, his outspoken friends, and a talking rabbit. He also wrote Write This Book, an interactive mystery that asks readers to help finish the story themselves.

After years of performing the role of an unknown author, Simon publicly connected himself with Pseudonymous Bosch. He has also published under his own name, including The Anti-Book. He lives in Pasadena with his husband, their two children, and two dogs. Chocolate is still welcome. Mayonnaise, apparently, is not.